We performed a comparison between Fortinet Fortigate and Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls based on our users’ reviews in four categories. After reading all of the collected data, you can find our conclusion below.
Comparison of Results: Based on the parameters we compared, Fortinet Fortigate seems to be a slightly superior solution. All other things being more or less equal, our reviewers found Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls to be one of the most expensive products on the market. Some also felt that the user interface and the documentation could be improved.
"Security, SD-WAN, and Streetscape are valuable features."
"A strong point of FortiGate is that the graphical interface is complete and easy to use, especially if we think there is a list of operations that we are able to perform inside."
"Easy to implement, and it is also reliable."
"Fortinet FortiGate has many valuable features, such as IDS, and intrusion detection. It has security features that are in part with the technologies that are available in the market."
"The IPS is good. It protect my network from attackers."
"The most valuable features are SD-WAN, application control, IPS control, and FortiSandbox."
"The most valuable feature is the FortiManager for centralized management."
"The reporting you receive out of this appliance is excellent. You will not need an external management system."
"Some of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls' valuable features are their powerful capabilities and user-friendliness."
"The most valuable features are application inspection and sandboxing. Application inspection decides where traffic is transmitted. If I have a perimeter report for a particular service, then other services or malicious services cannot use an open port. In this way, application inspection is doing a fantastic job. We also have a very good sandbox with almost no rate limit. It will inspect any file that comes in and goes out in a dedicated patch to identify malware. Therefore, these two things help me to protect our organization from any bad actors."
"The user ID, Wildfire, UI, and management configuration are all great features."
"The most significant benefit is threat protection. Anti-malware uses signatures, so dynamic analyzers like WildFire are the best way to protect the company. It is a firewall based on application control, user ID, and security policy. We can use it based on user and application ID without a stateless firewall or TCPIP ports."
"From my experience, comparing it to other products, the granularity you can have in the application is very good. The application detection is excellent. It's certainly one of the best."
"The user experience is good and the configuration is very easy."
"One of the best firewalls on the market."
"The strengths of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls are application visibility and application awareness. Their strong point is identifying applications for traffic. So all of the policies that are configured are related to the application and not to a port."
"Its filtering is sometimes too precise or strict. We sometimes have to bypass and authorize some of the sites, but they get blocked. We know that they are trusted sites, but they are blocked, and we don't know why."
"Fortinet FortiGate needs to improve the logging and reporting. Additionally, the next-generation application's policies should be improved. When they were released they had bugs."
"There are some complex administration tasks in their administration portal. That needs to be improved."
"Fortinet FortiGate is a firewall solution and once it's deployed, you can rest assured that your system is secure."
"The UTM filtering needs improvement."
"The reporting in Fortinet FortiGate could improve. Customers are having to purchase additional reporting components. When I have used the Sophos solution it is a complete solution, in Fortinet FortiGate you have to use additional tools to have the features needed."
"Some of the filtering is not robust, you can escape it with a VPN. Some of the users bypass some of the filters. It catches some but it also misses some, that area could be improved. It's functioning reasonably but there's room for improvement in that area."
"With FortiGate, the main complaint that I have heard is about the technical support."
"The bugs can be improved."
"Technical support could be faster."
"PA-220 Next-Generation Firewall would be perfect if it has spam filtering."
"Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls don't provide a unified platform that natively integrates all security capabilities. It's missing some features for geofencing and understanding locations."
"The tech support was once great, but now it is poor. The tech support has gone south. It is really difficult. I had a Priority 1 case last a week in their queue, and after multiple complaints, I finally got somebody to take the case. These are things that are unacceptable in the business world. They could train their employees better."
"The solution has normal authentication, but does not have two-factor or multi-factor authentication. There is room for development there."
"Surfacing actionable intelligence right away could be better. You have to dig far to get some of the information. If the solution could surface the two or three things out of the 10,000 a day that we really need to deal with, it would be helpful."
"The built-in machine learning features provide some automation, but I think there should be an option for manual review because nothing replaces the human eye."
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Fortinet FortiGate is ranked 2nd in Firewalls with 306 reviews while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is ranked 6th in Firewalls with 162 reviews. Fortinet FortiGate is rated 8.4, while Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Fortinet FortiGate writes "It's a reliable solution that's easy to install and cheaper than competitors ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls writes "We get reports back from WildFire on a minute-by-minute basis". Fortinet FortiGate is most compared with Sophos XG, Cisco Secure Firewall, Netgate pfSense, Meraki MX and WatchGuard Firebox, whereas Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls is most compared with Check Point NGFW, Azure Firewall, Meraki MX, Sophos XG and Netgate pfSense. See our Fortinet FortiGate vs. Palo Alto Networks NG Firewalls report.
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